Reviewing the Reviewers: The Blog is Alive and Kicking

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The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell reviewed Chris Anderson’s most recent book, Free!, and it is an interesting read (with commentary across the web). Just like Anderson’s response on his own blog.

Welcome to the era of blogs, where reviews can be applauded, questioned, and picked apart not only by the masses (aka the readers), but also by the publishers and producers.

It used to be a straight forward thing, reviewing a product. Not anymore, because when anyone can publish a commentary on their own ground (aka the blog), it also means that reviewers suddenly find themselves being constantly reviewed. [Read more…]

Chris Anderson on the Wikipedia Controversy

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Controversy? Yes, I think we should call it that since it certainly has made the news. In fact, I read about how Chris Anderson copies Wikipedia in my morning paper. So there you go.

If you’ve been following this story, you might be interested in reading Anderson’s response, in a blog post. Nothing new really, he was open about it from the start, but he does explain how this could happen.

Chris Anderson’s Free! Borrows From Wikipedia

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Wired editor Chris Anderson is soon to launch his latest book/theory, following up on The Long Tail, titled Free!. There’s definitely nothing wrong with his ideas if you ask me, and you can read them for yourself on Wired, but the book seems a bit, well rushed perhaps?

First there was the WordPress incident, where Anderson probably was making the famous wordpress.org/wordpress.com mixup. He should know better, and a technical reviewer should have caught that.

Now there’s copy-pasting from Wikipedia.

Fast Company found the Virginia Quarterly Review blog post detailing how Anderson copy-pasted an entry from the Free lunch entry on Wikipedia, and illustrates it with side by side comparisons. Just look at all that yellow text marking the similarities! [Read more…]

Chris Anderson Doesn’t Get WordPress

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I’m a big fan of Chris Anderson, the Wired editor and The Long Tail author. His most recent book is Free!, due anytime soon (for free in some versions, paid in others), and it is all about content online. I especially like his thoughts on freemium, free+premium that is, being what Flickr does with paid pro accounts that more or less makes the service free for non-paying users.

But he doesn’t get WordPress. At least not if this tip sent to WordPress developer Mark Jaquith is true. [Read more…]